Liang was originally a painter in attendance at the imperial painting academy in Hangzhou during the Southern Song period. For uncertain reasons, he left the academy to become a Chan Buddhist priest, and his later paintings, those that reflect his involvement with Buddhism, are of most interest. He became a priest in a temple near Hangzhou, the capital city of the Southern Song dynasty. Because Chan painting generally, and that of the Southern Song in particular, has not been popular with the Chinese collector of more restrained Confucian sensibility, all the extant works that can be accepted as by Liang Kai are now in Japan. They have been much prized and imitated there.